VIDEO: Florida Newsmaker: CFO Jeff Atwater

Ron Sachs of Sachs Media Group is providing a series of interviews with newsmakers in Tallahassee in a partnership with the Florida Press Association.

In this week's videotaped interview, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater sits down with Sachs Media Group’s Alia-Faraj Johnson and calls on lawmakers to give recently implemented PIP reform efforts a chance to work.
Despite a 2012 law to fight fraud in the state’s no-fault auto insurance system, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater says it’s premature for the Legislature to abolish the state’s Personal Injury Protection (PIP) system all together. “I’m as impatient as the Legislature,” CFO Atwater said. “If these rates don’t go down by the fall, by the first of the year, by this time next year, I’ll be saying to the Legislature, for heavens sakes, revoke this and put something else in force, reduce these rates.”

During the program CFO Atwater also said state agencies need to do a better job of negotiating the more than $50 billion in private sector contracts and grants the state handles. “No private sector company would do what the state is doing. They would have due diligence, they’d have backup controls,” Atwater said. “I’m asking the Legislature, put in law contracts that agencies put in place, to spend the peoples money, have to have good quality elements, so that we get what we’re paying for.” Atwater addresses those issues and more on “Florida NewsMakers.”

Last modified: April 25, 2013
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